My car is the antithesis of a Jalopnik reader's car. It is big, it is slow, it is front wheel
drive, and it is an automatic. The
interior is full of fake wood and hard plastic, and it's not even brown or a diesel. It's the base trim of the
model range, and the sporting version, the "good" version, was voted the worst
car GM made during the recession era. My
daily driver is a 2009 Impala LS, that car you tried to avoid at Hertz, and I
like it. I said specifically in my
review of my wife's Fiat that I don't want to drive around in a refrigerator on
wheels, yet I own a car that provides the smallest adrenaline jolt you can get
this side of a Prius. This is not a car
that I should like, and I'm sure several of you will point that out to me below
in the comments, probably in all caps. Regardless
of that, it's a car I'm fond of, and it serves as a helpful reminder to me to
respect everyone's choice of car, not matter what they drive.

I hated the
Impala when my parents bought it back in 2009, and hated it for a variety of
reasons. It was slow, boring, had no
rear cupholders (which is a big deal to a kid who spends time back there) the
dash was ugly, and to my ignorant eyes, the grill was already rusting! It actually wasn't, I was just an idiot and the
chrome was merely dirty, but to me, it was another reason not to buy the
car. At the time, I wanted my parents to
buy a Mazda 6 sedan, which all of the magazines I read told me it handled much
better, and you could get it with a manual.
The Impala rocked the 4T60e four speed auto, which on a fun-to-use scale
of 1 to 10 is just above being castrated by a blind man with no hands wielding
a rusty spoon. Regardless of what I
said, my parents were not swayed, and brought the big red couch-on-wheels home.

My opinion
changed after I started driving it. Our
previous car, a 1997 Chevrolet Malibu, was the only thing I had any real
experience driving, and compared to this, the Impala was smoother, quieter,
quicker, and had a better sound system.
The handling limits were hilariously low, but the combination of
traction control and tires that would howl for mercy long before they would let
go meant that I never wrapped it around a tree while learning to hustle
it. I started getting compliments from
friends on the color, and how nice it was, and it became OK in my book. It stayed this way until my sophomore year in
college, when my parents let me take it to school, and basically let me have my
way with it.

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Over the
next two and a half years, the car has been de-badged, de-chromed, and had a
host of suspension upgrades installed, including springs, sway bars, and strut
braces. I traded my parents my steel
wheels for their alloys, and got experienced with Plasti Dip. I've done everything in this car, from senior
prom to getting married to my first autocross; its road tripped to the beach
more than once, and survived a deer collision and ditzy girls in parking
lots. Despite the car's flaws, I love
it, and I'm honestly glad my parents got it.
They were crazy gracious enough to title it over to me, so now
the future of the car is in my hands. It
needs work, and while I'm far too broke to attend to it now, it will get the
attention it deserves eventually. Which
is a shame, really, because it needs that six speed pronto.